Enterprise Marketing Software Resources From ADAM

One of our featured DAM Vendors, ADAM, published a series of resources about enterprise marketing software earlier this month. They refer to them as ‘Propositions’ rather than whitepapers, but that is essentially what they are. These days, ADAM prefer to call themselves as an “Enterprise Marketing Software Developer” and play down the DAM element that was their original core focus – although in fairness their product range has expanded to cover a wider scope of activity within the marketing function.

They cover four main areas (each with a separate paper):

Security

Scalability

Multilingual

Open Architecture

“It’s relatively easy to determine whether a marketing software solution will meet your company’s current and identifiable future needs. You can collect information about existing marketing requirements and processes, develop a functional specification for the solution, and carefully evaluate the capabilities of alternative offerings…It’s more difficult to determine whether a software solution has sufficient flexibility to handle unpredictable future needs. This is a critical decision factor because it largely dictates how durable a software solution will be. In this context, durability refers to how long a software solution will meet an organization’s business requirements.” [Read More]

I have read through the documents and although we’ve given ADAM a hard time on the pages of this journal for some of their general marketing (especially press releases) the papers are quite good – as is their blog now too. Since they have allowed me to guest post, I can’t claim complete impartiality but Jan Dejosse who is the CMO at ADAM has evidently got to work on making it more about information and education than direct pushing of product. I’m not sure if some of this is the direct influence of G.David Dodd who seems to have some association with ADAM but they seem to be paying attention to many of his recommendations – although if I had to make a criticism it would be that they intro themselves and the capabilities of their solutions a bit too quickly into the paper. With that being said, they keep it subtle and the information is credible, not arrogant and makes them sound like they know what they’re talking about.

We have featured Picturepark and David Diamond’s DAM education materials a lot (including their own enterprise DAM white papers). They still probably have the best examples of this sort of approach but it seems like a few other vendors are beginning to grasp this now (at long last).

I’ll hesitate to use the term ‘content marketing’ to describe this activity, because I tend to think it’s a nonsense description. The point should be obvious, if you have a complex product (like a DAM system) people won’t buy it unless they understand what it is properly and how it applies to their situation so you have to provide educational resources that they can trust and understand first. That fact hasn’t changed for centuries – nor is it likely to for centuries more to come.

I applaud Adam for offering these documents. Even if they did hire outside the company to write them (Mr. Dodd), at least it shows that they understand that “Sell! Sell! Sell!” isn’t the best way to build relationships with clients and prospects. As you’ve pointed out before, Ralph, this is a lesson too many DAM vendors haven’t yet learned.

Granted, I would prefer to see a company’s demonstration of expertise coming from *inside* the company, but I think Adam probably has some pretty smart people on staff too. They are one of the DAM vendors I have always respected as a competitor.

The bottom line is that we are selling software and services that are not self-explanatory. So the more we can collectively do to educate and inform, the easier it will be for people to make better decisions and avoid purchase mistakes. So I’m all for supporting any DAM vendor who supports this goal.

Just to be clear over the points in the original article, my observation about G.David Dodd’s involvement with ADAM is entirely conjecture on my part based on the fact they appear to follow a lot of his advice and he has guest blogged for them. I have provided an article for ADAM’s blog too – but I haven’t written any papers for them nor had other consulting engagements.

If he is involved at all, my guess is that G.David Dodd will have an advisory role rather than writing the papers directly (equally they could have just read his many excellent blog articles). Their propositions contain some technical detail so it seems more likely that they were written by a member of their staff who would have good knowledge of their products.